


Sparks Burn Brighter Than Flames

by NovemberVenom



Category: MCSM, Minecraft: Story Mode - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Feral Behavior, Fire, Gore, Ivor and Petra but like not in a romantic way, Lots and lots of fire, Medical Inaccuracies, Original Characters - Freeform, fusion au, sword fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 04:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18771298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovemberVenom/pseuds/NovemberVenom
Summary: Radar finds himself up in arms against one of the world's most powerful dual fusions, Fire Aspect, in order to protect Petra's signature sword from being devoured by her in her quest for metal to devour.





	Sparks Burn Brighter Than Flames

The crunching of metal is sharp under Fire Aspect’s teeth, prompting Radar to wince. No set of jaws should shred through iron like that, hers persist, and the acute sound of scraping makes it tempting to abandon the armory. 

With constant bursts of flame from her throat, the metal rods melt and snap between her teeth like twigs. If they hadn’t been made her lunch, they would have been swords. 

Axel’s going to kill him. He shaped those rods just yesterday. 

Radar doesn’t mean to sound so quiet, so exhausted with tinges of fright, when he speaks to her. It sounds more like pleading and he can only guess that’s the kind of tone Aspect would want to hear. 

“Fire Aspect…” He’s unsure of what to say, too distracted with pouring his emotions into tone rather than words. He swallows a thoughtful mumble, speaking stringently this time in hopes of air of authority that would do something to convince her. “Please. You need to stop.” 

Fire Aspect, apparently, thinks otherwise, something made evident as she ignores his suggestion completely. She breaks another chunk from the rod and swallows hard like a vulture swallowing bone. 

Radar hasn’t a clue in the world as to why the Order would leave a scrawny, anxiety-ridden intern alone with her. With Fire Aspect, one of the most powerful fusions in their world, with little more instruction than ‘ _Just make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid_ ’. From Olivia. 

While he appreciates having any instructions, a bit more detail would have been nice. 

Jesse trusts him and Radar respects that, but it doesn’t mean he has to agree with her choices in management. 

...In truth, Olivia’s instructions happened to be phrased more like ‘ _Don’t let Aspect eat anything important._ ’ It only confuses him more, plunges him deeper into a the chaotic world of the Order’s lack of logic, because heroes like the Order of the Stone should know far better than to leave the protection of treasure and priceless artifacts against a dragon in human form in the hands of a teenager who weighs less than a hundred pounds. 

For a moment Radar thinks that maybe, just maybe, they’d forgotten how insignificant he is compared to them. They could so easily forget that he isn’t one of them, when the lines of their vision casually blurred at who was used to what, who knew this or that.

He never slayed a dragon, never defeated a witherstorm, or saved countless worlds from cruel tyrants and sentient redstone horrors. Their prowess, skill, and will far exceeded that of the common person, let alone that of an intern just trying to get by, who happened to get lucky and was picked up by none other than who many considered the world’s greatest leader. 

(Did Jesse feel pity or see potential in him? He isn’t sure.) 

Radar may be small, but he’s not stupid. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance at stopping Fire Aspect. Not one of her foes have ever really stood a chance.

That won’t stop him from trying. 

He grabs one of her lower arms, tugging it like a child. _He’s nothing but a child in her eyes._ “Aspect! Come on! Axel worked hard on tho-” 

Another tough, painful-sounding swallow brings Radar’s reasoning to a halt. Her muscles flex beneath his fingers and he lets go of her arm, unnerved. When he looks up, she’s already looking down on him, a grin showing off her canines that match the grisly voice emerging from her throat. All the words he’s been preparing suddenly jam in his brain, overwritten. 

“Axel isn’t here. I’m sure he can make more.” 

The lack of iron rods in her grasp tells Radar that she’s finished with her meal, but she doesn’t sound satisfied, instead anticipant of more to come. 

Radar knows Aspect is greedy, but he’s never seen her like this, taking without rhyme or reason.

(The self-inflicting little voice in his head pipes up again.  
Maybe it’s because she’s not afraid of consequences wrought by a little intern, because she _knows_ how insignificant he is. In her eyes, all he can do it tattle on her.) 

She averts her gaze from him to the rest of the armory, avarice in her charcoal eyes that suddenly come alight. Across the armory, a golden sword lies display, glowing with enchantment, far shinier than it had been when Petra pulled it from one of Ivor’s chests just before the Witherstorm all those years ago.

 _Miss Butters_. She was here only because of a chip in her blade near the crossguard that Axel intended to repair soon using a new technique. Fire Aspect’s eyes brighten with greed. 

Gold is her favorite, after all. 

Radar’s stomach drops, bogged down in a toxic concoction of fear and anger. The immediate urge to fight back, to stop her despite all odds towering over him, pulls at the muscles in his legs and arms, so much smaller than her’s. Fire Aspect has no right to take that sword, regardless Petra’s ownership and her place as one half of Fire Aspect. 

If he’s the front line of defense, then so be it. 

Aspect tries to turn and stride for the sword, but Radar steps in front of her, arms crossed. Her height becomes so much more apparent and terrifying when she’s _right there_ , barely a step away as Radar blocks her way. 

“No.” He taps his foot, fear sinking into his soles. “If you’re going to eat something, you- you go to the kitchen and make something.” 

Fire Aspect’s mouth gapes in surprise, drawing in a breath. Sparks glisten on her stripes, and she huffs a smoky ghost of a laugh after she seems to realize he isn’t pulling some practical joke on her. 

“If you know what’s best for you, you’ll move.” 

Radar twitches, and he knows with the twinge in Fire Aspect’s eyes, his doubt had been made visible. He plants his feet on the ground. The words come automatically, too many emotions dug up and thrown into Aspect’s face on a whim that almost makes Radar recoil as soon as he’s said them.

“Ivor respects me and loves me, Petra respects me and loves me, So why don’t _you?_ ” 

It sounds awfully accusing, the thought that she doesn’t love him. 

Fire Aspect is caught. She blinks, smug grin melting into a frown, and opens her mouth to reply only to find that she can’t summon one nearly as well as she can summon other hot words drenched in disrespect. It stings, stirring yellow embers in her stomach. Her reasoning sounds as genuine as her care for Axel’s hard work. The words that leave her maw feel forced, regretful, dangerous as a flame jumping from the fireplace nibbling at carpet. She doesn’t look at him as she speaks. 

“Things like that are earned, Radar. You should know your place.” 

It leaves a searing mark far worse than any burn. They share a look and there isn’t a doubt in Radar’s mind she sees the hurt in his eyes. _Do you regret it already?_

She loves him like a cat loves a mouse; A thing to be played with then disregarded when she pleases. A thing to torture for her own gain and finish off when no more enjoyment can be squeezed from him. It feels like the room is burning up, his hands curl into fists. 

Radar snaps. “ _YOU should know YOUR PLACE!_ ” 

His voice cracks hard enough for Aspect to flinch. She tenses, taking a single step back in defense, before her maw pulls into a furious snarl. The room gets hotter, her arms unfurl, and suddenly Radar is reminded of how big the fusion really is, arms widened to the wingspan of a giant phantom.

“GET OUT OF MY WAY!” 

Just like that, anger dissolves into terror. 

Radar swivels and bolts for the sword. Behind him, Aspect screams in rage. 

“ _THAT’S MINE!_ ”

He gets to it first, lighter and faster than the fusion in pursuit. He’s used a short stone sword before, one he made himself from the remains of a wither skeleton’s blade, but it doesn’t prepare him for the weight of Miss Butters when he lifts her from the weapon stand. Her blade falls to the ground, pulling his wrists down with the hilt. 

An angry fusion charging at him did a number for strength and adrenaline. Miss Butters was hoisted over his shoulder, like Petra would hold her after a quick adventure in the hillside. His ankles burn when he leaps down the step, sprinting away, subconsciously for Ivor’s lab. His instincts tell him potions, safety, grandpa. 

Fire Aspect lunges but misses, hurling herself into a wall of maces that collapse on her in a crash of cacophonous metal. Her body shakes like a wet dog’s in attempt to dislodge the weight of weapons and pounce again, but the chains of flails scattered around her feet remain hooked to racks left on the wall, tangling her. Their spikes fail to pierce her skin. 

She yanks at them violently, roaring in fury. 

The wooden double doors to the armory look bigger than they really are when Radar runs past the archway almost tripping on his own feet. Those doors, with their thick spruce and metal studs and clamps, look like they belong to some kind of medieval fortress. 

They do, really, if the temple’s size and sturdiness are to be accounted for. 

As he runs, vision blurring and blood pumping, a tip from Gabriel returns to him. _Closed doors are awfully good at slowing people down._

The wood-iron doors slam shut, the echo reverberating through the temple halls. In such a large space of stone corridors and endless rooms, it sounds like a warning of chaos to come, a message to the walls and rooms full of nothing: Very much is about to be destroyed, and Radar is sorry to the stone even before destruction is wrought. 

The reminder comes quickly, as his running feet tread too quietly on stone brick, that Ivor is not in that lab, but behind him, part of a fusion who wants nothing more than to steal one of the Order’s most important artifacts. Miss Butters is an old blade, one to be respected and cherished. Certainly not one to be eaten on a whim by a greedy fusion. 

Fire Aspect’s struggle becomes more distant, but the quiet drives his nerves further to the edge, goosebumps refusing to smooth down under his sleeves. The air is too still. 

It feels like his mind is being strangled when he realizes that he fears for his life now. 

Down the corridor, there’s a crash, far louder than the slamming of the iron-lined doors. Radar glances behind him to see that the doors have not flown open, but were broken open, flames and splinters showering stone that had cooled and stacked long ago. Another creation of Axel’s had falls victim to her wrath. 

The air smells like burning timber and iron. Radar’s mouth tastes like blood. 

Fire Aspect screams his name, voice far too distorted into a roar to sound remotely human. Her steps, with so much more weight bearing down on them, pound like metal and thunder as she runs for him. 

He isn’t any faster than her with the weight of the sword. He doesn’t even know where he’s going, but Fire Aspect keeps to her charge, heavy steps approaching dangerously close, sparks streaming from her stripes. 

He sees a door and dives blindly for it, slamming it behind him and fastening the lock tightly. Muffled again she roars, ending with a growling jumble of words, something along the lines of no door being able to keep her from him. 

He ignores it, for his own mental security, leaving the cat with another toy to break. 

The door had led to a stairwell, steps descending into the darkness of the temple basement, contrary to his plan of taking shelter in Ivor’s lab. 

That was upstairs. But with a series of banging from the door behind him, Radar is aptly reminded that his current options are highly limited. 

Ivor was supposed to have some point of access to the basement from his room, the basement being where he kept extra supplies and inactive brewing stands, or where he often left ingredients to hang-dry on the numerous racks and scaffolding. 

Radar had only been to the basement a few times on quick nervous trips into its depths with Jesse, most often when she needed to pull out extra building materials when they were late on replenishing those supplies. Petra, once before, had brought him into the basement’s deepest depths to show him the wine stash for when he got older. 

(At the time, he was given the feeling that some of her suggestive mannerisms was simply alcohol speaking through her system. She was already tipsy after a particular night of celebration nearing the end of the harvest season. 

The following morning, Radar was granted the pleasure of helping tend to their many hangovers. Oh, how he wishes things could be so simple now.” 

Lukas had once told him stories of endermen that lived down here, and better yet, loosely passed on rumors of another _person_ living there. He couldn’t imagine how someone could stand it, living among the darkness, the corridors of unknowns, the numerous forests of cobwebs and fields of dust. 

They wouldn’t fail to run that sort of thing by him in a more serious manner, would they? 

As much as the order seemed to collectively love him, some of them were content to play the role of older siblings and tempt his anxieties. What was the difference between scaring him with tongue-and-cheek stories and lying? They never liked lying, did they?

(Hadn’t they have told him the truth about the Ender Dragon for a reason?) 

Regardless, he doesn’t have any choice but to duck into the depths, Aspect’s nearby rampage pulling him nearer to the temple’s shadowy underbelly. 

It’s dark. So dark. The only source of light in the evidently expansive space is one redstone lamp on a far wall, its light weak with age and muddled with grime. Even at distance, he can see the corpses of moths that surround it. 

There’s not much in the basement, mostly crates of building material and crumbling scaffolding from when the temple was under construction. It’s not the prettiest, built of thin walls of varying materials and a floor of cobble, even just dirt in some darker corners where wild animals would readily nest. The signs of some already reside there stick out like sore thumbs; dead moths speak for themselves, but the cobwebs strung up by lesser spiders say even more. 

Radar paces deeper into the darkness, steps slow and careful, praying to whatever Gods may watch over them that no mobs, be it larger spiders or zombies, have been able to wonder in overnight

A second later, he’s reminded that something far worse is looking for him. Far behind him the door to the basement breaks open, a wave of wind and heat washing through the dark like a dragon’s muggy breath. 

Radar breaks into another desperate, blind run through the wider corridors of the basement, running well past the redstone lamp into more all-consuming darkness with Miss Butters in hand. With her weight, there’s an unfamiliar ache in his ankles. He’s afraid to breathe hard, for fear that Fire Aspect would find him that way. 

He already hears her shuffling closer to the entrance, moving some crates and breaking others open. Her voice is quieter in the dark. “You’d better show yourself. I _know_ you’re here!” 

It’s enough to send him flying faster, around a corner into a hall lined with redstone torches, eerily dark and creepy. It looks like something from a nightmare, perhaps an image from one of Lukas’s more terrifying novels. 

He keeps going. Just keeps going, going, going until Radar finds himself in another run-down space, a room this time, occupied by more dying redstone lamps and storage boxes. By the time he slows enough to shut the door, his ankles burn, as do his shoulders. 

If he can’t run anymore, he’ll have to hide. 

There’s another door to the right side of the room, but his nerves bite at him like horseflies to stay away from it and the light flickering underneath. There are as many cobwebs as there are stones in the cobble floor beneath his feet, and in the farthest corner are green masses that he can’t bring himself to think about what they may be. 

Fire Aspect roars, distant but terrifyingly close. 

He unlatches the closest chest and leaps into it. It slams shut, shutting out the reddish light outside. His only light becomes the subtle enchanted glow of Miss Butters on top of him. The floor of the chest consists of none other than old hay and leather, something that makes him strangely gracious. Radar thinks, for a second, that it’ll somehow help mask his scent. 

Aspect told him a few times before that she could smell fear. According to her, it smells like salt and sweat. He’s not taking chances. 

The darkness hugs him, cold like a cave but warm with his own heat and sweat. Only when he’s finally resting in one spot does he realize that he’s shaking, fingers trembling and chest rising and falling intensely with missed breath. 

He feels like the corpse of a warrior, laying in a box with a heavy sword on his chest, even if the sword is lopsided and his legs are folded. How easily the hay beneath him could burn like kindling and take him with it. 

With newfound time Radar begins to think too hard, just like he always does to himself, the way he hates, the way that rarely comes upon him with distractions of errands and paperwork. It’s the precise thing he’d managed to avoid running through the basement halls and corridors, fueled by adrenaline and fear, but now he’s cornered, just as much as he is by Fire Aspect. 

He should have done more training with Petra. He should have listened to more of Ivor’s lectures. He should have taken Lukas’s offers for training on long-distance combat. He should have joined more of the Order’s training sessions, or at least watched instead of hiding away to finish papers, or plans for Beacontown to change things that didn’t need fixing. He should have tried so much harder to be part of their family, to learn how they ticked. 

If he had done that, would he have ‘earned’ Fire Aspect’s respect? 

(Her _love?_ ) 

Does Ivor even love him? Does Petra? What about the rest of the Order? 

His breath wavers, and for an instant the tightness in his chest indulges him, and he wonders once again if he’s going to die. The room is pregnant with nothingness and silence for what feels like hours. it weighs on him as much as the sword does. 

Something outside outside as soon as he considers leaving. The door creaks, hot breath following the complaining of floorboards, and immediately Radar tenses and holds his breath, nearly hugging Miss Butters. He would, if not for her sharpened blade. 

“Come out, _coward._ ” Fire Aspect hisses like steam, words muffled. He doesn’t come out. He stays unmoving, frozen in unrelenting terror. Outside, the fusion mumbles something unintelligible, but Radar swears he hears ‘Soren’ in the garbled mix of angry words. 

Go figure. He’s not unlike the most glorious coward there ever was in this world. 

There’s more commotion outside, metal shelves being knocked over and what sounds like crates being opened, or perhaps smashed. It’s no rampage, but it’s close, with Aspect grumbling and growling obscenities in her search. 

What Radar questions is why the heck she doesn’t just go back to the armory and eat other gold tools. Why _this one?_ Why the _one_ enchanted sword that needs to be protected most? 

Fire Aspect was always picky like that. She takes what she wants first, then everything else. It’s something he’s known, but in the moment it makes his heart beat faster. 

“Give me the _SWORD, RADAR!_ ” 

Suddenly, the chest lurches, hopping from a hard kick and sending Radar’s head to the roof of the box. He swallows a whimper from the pain, trying so hard not to move, not to breathe. It goes quiet outside. He knows, with his weight, the chest must be awfully heavy compared to the others in the room. 

A pause crawls on for ages. It’s the sound of a predator calculating before she pounces. 

Five inches away, on the outside of the chest, clawed fingers fool with the latch. 

_I’m going to die. I’m going to die. If she doesn’t kill me, Axel and Petra will._

The lid lifts an inch or so, clawed fingers lingering underneath.

The door across the room bursts open with a bash. Just as it does, Aspect’s fingers straighten. She drops the lid shut. 

“What the fuck are you _doing?_ Fuck off! Get _OUT!_ ” 

Glass breaks. Something sizzles and Fire Aspect hisses, but he knows her voice well enough to know its a hiss of anger rather than pain. There’s stomping, more hissing, the breaking of wood, and then silence falls upon the room once again. All but for a heavy, frustrated sigh, not belonging to Fire Aspect.

It reminds him that the cursing voice most definitely wasn’t that of Fire Aspect, either. 

There’s someone else in the room. She keeps talking to someone he doesn’t know, anger suffocated by exasperation. 

“Winslow, if she touched the creeper spores, we’re going after her.” 

The creeper spores. So that’s what those green masses in the corner were, then?

Despite all survival instincts, all his desperation, something in Radar tells him that he’ll live if he peeks. The instruction is autonomously followed. He lifts the lid at his own will, only an inch. 

There’s a woman standing next to the door that had light filtering beneath. Radar’s breath catches when she sees her, how disheveled she is. Her hair runs past her shoulders, dark dyed red and frazzled with far too many strands straying from the bulk of it, and while her clothes aren’t nearly as worn-looking as her face. Her apparel is certainly old, similar to rusted iron axe in her hands. 

Her eyes scare him the most. As dim as the rest of her looks, they’re bright, beyond aware and strikingly _alive._

It feels like being struck by lightning when they make eye contact. This time, he can’t bar the whimper slipping from from his throat when the chest lid shuts. A far quieter shuffle moves across the room outside. The stranger stands next to the chest, simply looking. 

He’s not even sure why the effort to hide is still being made, all things considered. 

The chest lid opens again ever so slightly, just as it had twice already. He’s met with the violent stranger’s striking eyes. 

“You.” 

Radar swallows a ball of bile in his throat he hadn’t even felt until it was forced down. The woman takes it for a response. He can only see her eyes, but she can see all of him curled up and afraid, the glow of Miss Butters in his arms. Her brow twitches. 

“Here.” She slides the rusted axe into the opening like a letter through a slot. it falls with a _thunk_ onto the floor of the chest. “She wrecked this place. Go teach her a lesson. By the way, there’s a longsword scabbard underneath you. You’re going to want to use that.” 

The chest snaps shut. A moment passes, a heavy door closes, and he’s alone again. 

When Radar leaves the chest, the room is twice as destroyed as it had been when he’d entered it. Crates are smashed, resources are scattered everywhere, some parts of the cobble flooring scorched to the point of blackness. The creeper spores, however, are unharmed, and the room is still home to a lonely darkness, not a fire burning in sight. 

After grabbing the scabbard and slinging it over his shoulder, sliding Miss Butters into it, he just barely avoids stepping in a still-bubbling puddle of harming potion near the doorway. Radar leans out, checking for Aspect but finding no sign of her. Yet, as he makes his exit, Radar breaks into a run. 

He’s not going to be saved like that again. The Order isn’t going to be home for another hour, if his timing is right, and he doubts any more kind strangers are going to be emerge from the woodworks to assist him. 

“ _Coward_ ” comes back to back to bite as he scampers through the darkened halls. Its teeth are just as sharp as Fire Aspect’s, if not more so, hot and stinging on the inside and out, but the wound does not dare burn itself closed. Miss Butters feels lighter, everything feels a little lighter, even with the added weight of the iron axe in his arms. 

He’s supposed to be so much braver than this. 

His bare arms are cold, sleeves having been rolled up in some burst of anxious twitching some time before, but it brings his tattoos to attention. Black serpents coil around his arms, slithering up under his sleeves. Their scales are black as charcoal, color as vivid as the day he got them, fangs on display near the top of his hands as they’re poised to strike, eyes slit. 

Whatever Fire Aspect says, it can’t hurt as much as the tattoos did when he got them. He did not pay to get them for nothing. He didn’t escape the Sunshine Institute for nothing. His fist curls tighter around the axe handle.

Fear chills him to the bone, but Radar refuses to be a coward for a second longer. 

Fire Aspect does not deserve the pleasure of calling him a coward. 

\---

Ivor’s lab is easy enough to find after several twisting, turning corridors lead him to a surplus of hanging ingredients, mere feet from rickety wooden stairs that lead up to a spruce doorway. Ivor’s style to a T. 

For some reason, when Radar enters, he expects the room to be dead. Quiet, dark, disfigured like the far lands, choked of all life without the prescence of Ivor, but it isn’t. It’s alive as it’s ever been, several stable potions bubbling (lord forbid Ivor leave his less delicate, stability-lacking experiments unattended), candles lit, shelves filled to the brim with books and an enchantment table greeting Radar with a flip of its pages. Ivor’s desk, as always, is messy with scratched parchment and old, colorful stains from potion spills in the months prior. On the other side of the room, the wall is covered in racks of potions, fresh and ready for use. The lab is an untouched sanctuary, harmonious with quiet chaos as it had always been. 

If Fire Aspect has been anywhere on her rampageous search for Radar, she sure as hell hasn’t been here. 

Radar recognizes the color of strength potions well enough. He snatches one of Ivor’s near-torn satchels from the end of a bed and fits several strength potions into leather notches that seem designed just for the shape of bottles, Ivor was always crafty like that. 

He reaches for two particularly bright health potions as well. _Just in case._

One more potion, swirling orange with green flecks, catches Radar’s eye as he’s almost out the door. Fire resistance. _Of course._

Instead of bagging it, Radar snatches it and pops the cork. its taste is numbing, somewhere between painstakingly hot and burning cold, Radar unsure of which would make more sense, but potions never made much sense anyway, according to Ivor. The stinging aftertaste gives him plenty of time to think it over. 

Radar’s skin grows colder than it had been before, as though the temperature of the lab- almost always comfortably warm -drops rapidly. 

The desire to seek warmth was a known side effect of fire resistance; that’s what Radar had learned on one restless night spent in Ivor’s lab. He’d learned and retained that, along with the fact that Ivor was once tasked with defeating three sentient zombie pigmen in a game of blackjack. 

He learned that Ivor was fantastic at spinning tales. 

It’s reimbursed as more encouragement to seek out Fire Aspect and teach her the lesson she needs. As he leaves the lab, almost tip-toeing into the hall and closing the door slowly enough as not to let the hinges squeak, Radar stops. There’s an integral flaw in his plan. 

He _has no plan._

in fact, he has no idea where Fire Aspect is now in the first place, or how in any way he’d stand a chance against her in combat with nothing much more than an axe, a damaged sword, and raw teenage determination. Would fire resistance help that? Maybe, but that did little to reassure him, considering the summonable weapons and the brute strength she could use to simply tear him apart. 

He doesn’t want to believe she’d do that, but at this point, nothing is out of the question. 

It’s unfair how durable she is. It’s tried and true that few weapons could actually pierce her flesh, and the most that axe would do was bruise her, if he even had the chance to hit at full swing from someone with a stronger sword arm. She’s immune to fire, and to coincide with that, only weapons enchanted with her name- fire aspect -had the chance to spill her blood. 

He doesn’t know Miss Butter’s history and can’t remember if the foes Petra has slayed with her died with steam in their wounds. He’s not willing to test that at the risk of breaking the sword; the chip near her hilt, though small, looks arduous and he fears what a big swing might do to her. 

If he breaks Miss Butters, Fire Aspect won’t kill him. _Petra_ will. 

There’s too much he doesn’t know. Too much that he doubts. 

He’s tired of doubting. 

The snakes on his arms feel like they’re coiling tighter, fed up with Radar and his weakness, feeling like they’ll bit down at any time as to say _Why do you wear us if you can’t even abide by the promise that we came with._

He’s not ‘supposed to’ be stronger than this. He _is_ stronger than this, braver than this, and it’s time to show Fire Aspect what he’s made of. Plan or not, he’s going to find her, and she’s going to learn who she’s really dealing with. 

He’s not just a kid. He’s not just an anxious intern. He’s _Radar_ of the Order of the Stone.

\--

It was easy enough to find her. Not in the armory, but in the training arena, where other various weapons of both gold and steel were kept. However, all of them are scattered away from the racks, several bent and discarded, some luckily untouched but thrown aside nonetheless. unlucky others are left with only their hilts, metal blades and pieces having been devoured by a furious and hungry fusion. 

Perfect. 

Radar supposes it’s the best he could have hoped for. 

It figures that she gave up looking for him. _Who cares about the pathetic little intern when there’s more to eat_ , she probably thought. 

Though smaller than most, the arena was well designed, being one of the most used and liveliest areas of the temple basement. With Ivor’s insistence, the core of the arena where training occurred was not entirely unlike a fighting cage: Entryways at the east and west side for the Order to enter, A floor of hard stone with trap doors placed here and there, larger doors and chambers within the main structure to hide monsters captured for training purposes. 

“Spawners” were rare in their world, and perhaps one if its greatest mysteries. The magic within them, only evident by glowing sparks and mirages of the monsters they held, was widely studied and deeply unknown, for the energy needed to create endless waves of beasts was untold, something only one would expect from something along the lines of a command block, another device far more rare and mysterious. Regardless, the Order of the Stone had managed to grab a handful of spawner cages for themselves from different dungeons and dealers. 

Likewise, they’d placed the spawners in subsections of the arena, massive heavy doors barring the rooms off from the larger space. When needed, the doors would open, mobs surging from the chambers to be faced by awaiting Order members. Training with enemies that would never run out was a far better option than whacking a training dummy until all technique and purpose had been lost. 

The arena was sunken into the ground. Radar stands on the higher viewing area, watching Aspect from a distance. Distracted by a particularly shiny golden pickaxe, She doesn’t spot him. 

He supposes the setting is only fitting. The arena and the far corners of the room are lit by lava plumes shielded behind glass, also by Ivor’s request. The design is complimented by stone brick floors, iron plates, and dark oak wood that lines most of the corners and walls, all far enough apart to prevent the risk of any planks in the large chamber being set aflame by wayward sparks. 

Where he stands, he’d stood many times before, watching the Order of the Stone clash in training battles that were nothing short of aweing. Sometimes, they fought with one another, sparks flying from blades and axes while Gabriel or Ivor- standing in the viewing area above -spouted orders and routines, or criticized the flaws of their style. 

Other times, they battled mobs. A particular occasion came to mind of Jesse practicing drills of fighting opponents larger than her. Within the arena an iron golem swung and stomped, but every swing caught nothing but air. Jesse slid under it, catching the legs with an axe, and the golem fell with ease. It went similarly when another golem entered the arena, then a third. Jesse’s even taken it upon herself to dance between the towering golems, turning their swings against one another. 

The chambers below Radar’s feet rumble with beasts. Spawners only ceased summoning when the darkness around them was fully consumed by either light or its own beasts. With the shuffling, groaning, and pounding at the stone and great iron doors which held them, it was best assumed that he stood above the zombie chamber. 

Zombies were always the loudest. Skeletons at least had the nerve to settle, driven by malice rather than hunger, and the cave spiders saw to reason to escape, finding comfort in numbers. If they got hungry, they could simply pounce on one of their own. 

Kneeling down at the edge of the arena’s roof cage, Radar absentmindedly gives his palm a quick lick and smooths his hair down. His shoes are quiet enough not to catch Fire Aspect’s attention as he shuffles around the arena’s perimeter. 

Aspect, unbeknownst to herself, had backed into a corner that may as well have been an iron maiden. 

The lava traps, held far above the arena by iron trapdoors, would be of little use against her, and Radar doubted that anyone in the Order would be pleased with him setting off the emergency gravel fill, a mechanism held somewhat close to the lava far in the ceiling that would fill the arena to the brim with rocks and dust in a pinch. He didn’t want to suffocate Aspect, either, lest Petra and Ivor suffocate as well.

Killing Aspect, Radar told himself, was out of the question. 

He’d never seen her defeated. Now that he thinks about it, he’s not even sure if he’s heard of it. A retreat from her was plausible, but for her to be killed…

Radar’s muscles tighten and his mind screams, but instinct draws his thoughts elsewhere. If atunes were killed at their fusion’s death, the Order would have told him. 

Besides, there’s always the chance that she’s going to decimate him. 

Just another lost battle for the resume. 

In a particular corner curve of the arena, molten metal sizzles and Radar can only guess that Aspect is far too satisfied with herself, slurping up gold the same way a bear devours honey. 

Siccing the mobs from the chambers below on Fire Aspect is an option, especially while she’s so distracted, but that plan carries the same flaws as the falling gravel. All of his options- the spiders, the skeletons, and especially the zombies -would not stop attacking once Fire Aspect fell, likely charging for Ivor and Petra left defenseless. 

_What does it matter if they don’t lov-_

He cuts off the thought. Not now. Hopefully not ever. 

(Just like the rest of the Order, he’s not above bottling up all those feelings. If it works for them, it’ll work for him, and he’ll just make Ivor force it up later. Ivor’s good at that.) 

He continues to pace around the arena, weighing his options, when a stone pressure plate clangs agonizingly loudly underfoot and echoes through the arena chamber. Radar, instinctively, dives to a crawl, but falls close enough to the edge of the arena’s cage roof to see Aspect’s head shoot up like that of a startled cat. 

Small, half-block chambers filter open on either side of the arena, blasting out cold air and chunks of ice that feel as though they’ve been stolen from the arctic even outside the arena. Within the arena floor, pistons shift, pulling away sections of stone in exchange for gravel that almost immediately is coated in a thin layer of ice. The whole arena suffers the same fate within moments, resembling an ice rink where a battlefield stood only minutes ago. 

Fire Aspect, unsurprisingly, is not quick to blame herself for the change. Her head swivels left, right, looking for something she may have tripped on, then comes her epiphany. 

“ _RADAR!_ ”

He can see her, but her eyes aren’t on him. Her eyes are darting around just as her legs are, already beginning to pace the interior of the arena. 

There are two options: Run, or fight. 

For a moment, he returns to his roots. He knows its wrong, feels the shame bubble from his chest into his mind and brand itself in his cheeks as he gets to his feet and bursts into a sprint, but fate very quickly changes any plans of escape. 

He’s not careful enough. He trips, tumbling over a small ledge into the west stairway leading down to the belly of the area. Radar can’t mask the pitiful puppy-like yelp that jumps from his throat when the cornerstone of a stair meets his hip. Fate makes it all the more cruel in combination with his former screw-ups; the ground below him is freezing thanks to the arena’s transformation, chill sinking through his clothes, biting his skin like a swarm of little venomous bugs. 

(Skin that’s too tender, not scarred enough to be respected.) 

A perplexed rumble simmers in Fire Aspect’s throat. It sounds like that of a tiger, attention captured by prey. Her steps are thunder in a silent room, reverberations sinking into the ground as much as the cold seeped into his flesh. 

They’re heavier than they were before. _The gold. It’s weighing on her._

Fate gave him a lifeline. The door into the arena at the end of the stairway hall, a large cage door, is closed. Fire Aspect must have entered the arena from the other side, or else it would have been wide open, and he would have been easy prey. 

It feels like far less of a lifeline when Fire Aspect clings to the thin bars, snarling primordially. Her stripes light up like a firefly’s tail, sending a puff of sparks into the air around her. She looks like some vicious moth grasping for a light just out of her reach, limbs beating with effort to shake the cage from its place.

“Little _THIEF_ ” She stills for a moment and her voice goes low, holding every ounce of rage it had before, rekindled in guttural accusations. “COME HERE AND FACE ME!” 

The ice seeps deeper. He doesn’t move but blinks at her, inane terror on his face. 

Fire Aspect only stops thrashing the metal when she spits at him, then whips around in sudden retreat, retiring to all fours as she moves to the other side of the arena. Fire Aspect stops at distance, twisting around a second time to face him through iron bars that are significantly more dented by her rampage than they had been before. 

Fire Aspect, set on all six of her limbs like a demonic insect, scratches the ice ahead of her, white smoke puffing from her nostrils like that of a furious bull on the winter pasture. She rumbles another low, tigerlike growl.

Radar barely manages to get to his feet in time for her charge. Embers trail behind her from her hair and stripes like fireflies rising from grass. 

Blindly and without thought, Radar makes his own bolt for the door’s lever. From the start it refuses to rise under his strength, but with the scent of smoke in the air and adrenaline in his veins, it lifts with a final hoist. The clockwork of chains and pistons whisper behind the arena walls, and the door flies open. 

The expression on Fire Aspect’s face changes from blank rage to mouth-gaped shock as her palms run into the ground to slow the charge, but on the ice she slides uselessly, tripping over her highest set of arms, head slamming the step at Radar’s feet. The stone crunches at the weight of her impact. 

The heat of anger surging around her hits Radar like a wall. It doesn’t take more than a second for her to begin uprighting herself, stripes burning brighter. 

She’s been bested if only for a moment. She’s ashamed. She’s _furious._

Radar feels like he’s being tossed between the taiga and deadlands, fleeting one moment and freezing the next. This time, he’s frozen again, an idiot in Aspect’s eyes standing uselessly with that old iron axe in his hands. 

He almost crosses to the deadlands again, lurching to run up the steps, when a hand reaches out and snags his ankle. She pulls his leg violently from underneath him, pulls the breath from his lungs along with it, but his hands fly forward to stop the impact of his head and chest to the stair corners. 

It’s the least of his worries. 

A second hot palm grasps his ankle, then both of them pull. He’s dragged from the stairs, her pull slow and agonizing like the breaking of obsidian. 

Two more hands grab at his ankles. Her grip tightens, growing torrid with fury. 

She pulls violently, swings his body backwards with the brunt of her strength, and lets go mid-swing. 

The grey walls around him blur like storm clouds, lighting striking within them when ice and magma collide in the obscurity of Radar’s vision. The air moves streamlined, caressing him, freezing again, weightless. 

Another wall slams into him. This time, a real wall, crafted of real ice and stone. It tears any breath he’d managed to recover from him, flattening his lungs, pummeling his chest as he lands on it and rolls twice over. Something shatters beneath him, something breaks inside of him. The smell of hot iron fills his breath and senses. The rationality of normal vision does not return, surroundings blurring with the sporadic spark of light in the corners of his sight, head throbbing.

Radar can’t remember the last time he was thrown like that. Did the ender colossus ever do that? 

He’s not sure. 

What he does know is that Fire Aspect just threw him with no hesitation or mercy into the interior of the arena.

Fire Aspect, on her feet, who had begun to approach again from the now open arena door. Just as before, her steps rattle the ground like tiny blasts of TNT. That’s what it sounds like, as his ears are ringing. 

Radar sits up, wiping dark liquid from his cheek. Not blood, he realizes, but the remains of the strength potions that shattered beneath him when he’d met the ground and soaked his skin even through the satchel. 

No wonder his blood is pumping like it is. No wonder when he sees Aspect’s face, with messier locks already framing the blood trickling from her temple, all he wants to do is throw her just as she did him, to maul her like a wild animal in barbaric anger. 

(Radar’s never been so thankful for the violent side effects of strength potions.) 

He likewise discards the satchel to the ground, now useless to him, before reaching out and grabbing the handle of the axe not far from him, pulling it into his grasp again. 

“ _You bitch._ ” escapes under his breath, too quiet for Aspect to hear. 

“You were a fool to come back.” Her following laugh is too deep to be considered one given gingerly. Too villainous to be that of a hero. It sends heat up Radar’s spine as he struggles to his feet. 

“What makes you think you can stop me from taking what’s rightfully mine-” She grins, so poorly masking the exasperation in her voice when she eyes the hilt of Miss Butters, still strapped to Radar’s back. “You think you stand a chance against _me?_ ” 

Radar’s fingers tighten around the axe handle. Aspect stands tall and proud just as she would have on any other day. She’s a villain straight out of a storybook and It fuels his own fire. 

Though, it doesn’t stop the way he cringes inside as soon as he opens his mouth opens to speak, voice so exhaustively pitiful and angry, sounding more like a disgruntled boy than a hero who had been wrongfully mistreated. 

“I came because you’re a _jerk_!” 

Radar’s unsure, so unsure of anything, unsure of what good there was to come out of him hurling an axe in Fire Aspect’s direction, yet his arms raise quick as they ever have and the axe releases from his grip, turning in the air right for Aspect’s chest. For a moment bloodshed looks excruciatingly impending, axe blade one turn away from impact, then- 

She grabs it mid-air with one of her lower arms. The muscles in that arm ripple, flesh swinging ever so slightly with fat and muscle but still as stone in posure as she slowly raises the axe to her face while turning it to the side, eyeing it greedily. 

Her mouth opens to reveal canines sharper than a wolf’s, but a glow of fire in her throat distracts from it. A short blue burst overtakes the axe’s head, and in less than a moment it drips, drops of molten metal hissing on the frozen ground. 

Canines rip the metal head, now resembling a glob of gleaming yellow, from its place. Aspect swallows hard and the axe is no more, flaming handle thrown aside like a chicken bone. 

The following pause is so eerily silent, filled only with the effort of Radar’s lungs, the bubbling of magma and the whispering fractured of ice underfoot. The arena is so much darker than he thought it to be as his gaze filters through the room, but when it meets Fire Aspect again, it’s as bright as it needs to be. 

There goes his only good weapon. 

So he unsheathes his second to last, pointing a finger indignantly at Fire Aspect, feeling even stupider than the last time he bothered to speak. His cheeks burn despite the chill around them. 

“I came back because you’re a bully, and no one’s said anything about it- no one’s trying to _stop_ you!” His voice cracks, not from tears or fright, but simply because it seems to be his voice’s favorite hobby. “I still don’t know how you can be so- so freaking _heartless_ , when you’re made of people like Petra and Ivor. They’re kind and caring and selfless, so why aren’t _you?_ ” 

She squints at him. Her lips pull into a stupid, smug, wiry smile while he continues his tangent with passion and ferocity. Her body lowers, ever so slightly. 

Fire Aspect must think he’s adorable.

“Because,” She cocks her head, showing off those canines again as she speaks so condescendingly, lip rising like a dog's on edge. “I’m not _them._ ” 

Fire Aspect gasps, stripes bursting with flame in what Radar believes for a moment to be the start of a cry. Then, the pit of her throat glows once more, and it becomes strikingly apparent how wrong he is. 

Flames flood from her throat in a roar of their own, heat reaching farther than those of the flames she'd used to melt the axe and the metal meals before it. They flare out like an orange tongue, stretching for him. 

Radar isn't sure if he's had enough training to call it instinct when he rolls out of the way, but the action comes naturally, his burst short and swift, nowhere near as long lived as the flames that pursue him. 

Aspect heaves when her flames fizzle out, devolving into a frustrated growl. “You’re quick!” 

He would have been more inclined to agree if he wasn’t half-slipping, half-running on the icy stone in a sad attempt to flee her. He slides closer to the weapons rack, the only other part of the arena that could be considered some form of cover. 

Only, the wooden board that makes it up is broken, cracked in half and splintering where it hasn’t been completely decimated in an unseen burst of rage from Fire Aspect.  
All secondhand weapons it once held have undoubtedly been feasted upon, handles and hilts scattered like bones, their remains in the form of metal drops speckling the ground. 

The only saving grace it offers him now are the stone pillars which support it. Just wide enough for Radar to hide behind, which he does barely in time for Aspect to billow again, spitting fire on the remains of the weapons rack in a futile attempt to burn him. This time her flames stuck to the wood like paste, boring holes through it like a swarm of ravenous glowing beetles. They were dangerously close, swarming to nip him with their little fiery mandibles . 

As close as the fire creeps, however, it doesn’t burn. Embers drift in the air settling on his skin like snow to the freezing earth, but it does not sting. 

It’s a comical moment too late to remember that he’s taken a potion of fire resistance, effects still in full swing. 

He almost pushes away the thought that Petra would likely praise him regardless of his panic for ‘good instincts’. More doubt seeps into his mind, but this time it’s reassuring doubt, the kind that insists that even with fire resistance, he’d best avoid getting coated in the gooey magma-like flames currently eating through the weapons rack. 

Also comically, the weapons rack cracks, showering embers in his hair and eyes. He leaps back from a larger burst of flame near the top of the stone base, left standing between the two pillars. 

It collapses. Burning planks which had already only loosely held their place are dislodged from the larger board at his feet until only pieces remain, broken like the glass of a picture frame, flames refusing to release from the pieces, still devouring what they can greedily. When the rack falls it reveals Fire Aspect, standing a short ways away, staring him down with conceited spark in her eyes. 

Once again he feels an awful lot like an idiot, left standing like a sitting duck with no real place to run or hide, no weapon he’s fully willing to use, Fire Aspect rolling her shoulders only a few strides away. Sweat drips down his neck as he takes a single step back, lowering. 

_No. You’re not a coward._

Fire Aspect gives him her familiar priggish smile. 

“The sword, Radar. Now.” 

Radar glances over his shoulders only to be met with the lifeless gaze of a stone wall. All other exits are out of the question, long past Fire Aspect where an attempt at flight would only result in his capture, and thus the destruction of Miss Butters. 

He supposes he has no choice but to fight. 

Radar’s forehead creases as he glares back at the fusion. Fire Aspect would not have the pleasure of cornering him. He refused to be the prey in a game of cat and mouse, to hand over his pride, because in almost every case of such a thing, the mouse did not come with a sword strapped to his back. 

The hilt of Miss Butters is hot. Fittingly for her name, she slides from the scabbard with ease, nowhere near as heavy as she’d been before. Her golden blade shines in the dimness of the arena, shimmering like a river bottom with all her enchantments. Radar raises the sword into the air briefly, admiring her, before pointing the tip to his adversary. 

“Come and get it, then! I’ll fight back!” 

Fire Aspect’s face doesn’t change. Instead her palms begin to glow, and her arms cross, plunging to her sides that suddenly flare with bright orange. Her robes and hair wave at the sudden exertion of heat and energy, a burst that Radar feels from where he stands. 

Her arms pull from her sides, uncrossing, slowly unsheathing pillars of flame until the solid lengths of flame are freed completely with a burst of heat. In each of her hands is a sword nearly the size of Miss Butters, all flaming with the intensity of a wildfire, flames occasionally drifting far enough from the blades to reveal glimpses of emerald green underneath. Fire Aspect’s lip pulls up in a deep, wolfish snarl. 

Radar has his regrets. 

His grip on Miss Butters does not loosen, however, as he stands what little ground he’s managed to claim, waving the sword lightly in her direction. The same way he’s seen Petra wave it at charging raiders.

A beat passes, one, two, then Fire Aspect lunges for him at last with a monstrous battle cry. 

Immediately Radar lifts Miss Butters leaning her to the side, nearly a second too late to stop Aspect’s emerald blades from slamming into him from above. Sparks rain down as the metal clashes. Miss Butters pushing dangerously close to his face from the force, but not close enough to harm. Radar pushes the sword forward against her blades, forcing them closer to her with impalpable strength. 

Aspect growls at him through her effort, sure to show gritting teeth, a reminder of what other weapons she has. 

Yet, here she is, one of the world’s most powerful dual fusions, fighting the strength of a teenage boy. 

Radar slackens his efforts, easing her into pushing down harder before giving a mighty shove. It knocks Aspect two steps back, one of her boots losing traction on the ice as she tries to regain balance, but she catches her fall with her lower set of arms, swords still in hand. 

She huffs at him, head low but eyes locked on his, smoke steaming from her nostrils. 

He smiles at her with a familiar conniving grin as he bends his knees and sets Miss Butters forward in an offensive stance. 

“You think you stand a chance because you can _block?_ ” Aspect stands. She flips the blades down in her hands and they hang like enormous claws behind her, burning bright, just before she pounces again to plunge the blades down upon him. 

“Try THIS ON FOR SIZE!” 

Radar yelps, doggedly leaping to the side in another roll, sloppier and than the last. Aspect’s swords strike the ground behind him, piercing deep into the ice and stone. 

When he looks back, her head twists in his direction as swiftly as an owl’s. Her snapping snarl of anger twists into a doglike bark. 

Radar takes his chance to bolt around the perimeter as Aspect struggles to dislodge the blades, growing more furious by the second. Her violent tugging agonizingly pulls the swords away inch by inch, to no avail by the time he starts running. 

Thin puddles splash underfoot, the ice of the arena struggling to stay chilled in the midst of fire and turmoil. 

(That little internal voice of Ivor during arena training sessions bites at him. _Keep your eyes on your opponent, dammit! Eyes on her!_ ) 

Radar pivoted, swinging Miss Butters with him. 

Aspect had dislodged her swords much sooner than expected, already giving chase. The arena rings out with the cries of metal on stone as her swords skim the wall, marking it with scorch as she runs. 

On his part, running faster was likely the best course of action

He does so, returning to the game of cat and mouse, if only it buys him the time to think of another plan. Fire Aspect’s thundering steps grow closer, closer, then comes a clatter of swords, then-

The thundering steps stop. Radar keeps running, expecting her to bare down on him in a mighty leap, but the tackle never comes. 

He glances behind him to find his suspicions confirmed: Fire Aspect is missing, two of her swords slowly disintegrating on the ground behind him. 

A clatter of metal pulls his attention skyward to the cage-roof of the arena. 

Fire Aspect had become a demon insect once again. She doesn’t run or swing on the endless fractal branches of iron, but crawls rapidly on the slanted cage roofing of the arena, not only keeping pace, but moving even quicker. 

As soon as her pace surpasses his, Aspect juts one of her blades in front of Radar like a dead tree limb in a forest of stone. Some noise akin to a small scream escapes his throat as he ducks, sliding on the ice beneath the reach of the blade. 

Fire Aspect shrieks in frustration, leaping ahead once more, but now she hung lower, upright and leaning out with her lower set of arms clinging to the bars and her heels balancing on top of the stone wall where the cage roof ended. 

She swings a fiery blade in reach of him, but this time Radar swings quicker, Miss Butters meeting with the opponent sword in a plume of sparks and clanging metal. 

Fire Aspect suddenly discards the blade in her left hand. It fades into nothingness as soon as it clatters onto the floor, dispersing into sparks. In a swift motion with her open hand she lunges for the hilt of Miss Butters. 

Radar jerks back. Instead her palm runs straight into the base of the blade’s edge, cutting deep. Fire Aspect screams in pain and rage as steaming red spills onto gold. She hisses reproach, leaping back onto the cage roof out of Radar’s reach. On instinct he swings at her, and even out of reach she presses her back harder against the arena cage. 

“Damned _fire aspect!_ ” She snarls. 

Fire Aspect, in rue of her own name, runs her tongue over the wound of her hand. She swallows the blood without issue or remorse, salty taste of iron fueling her anger. 

So Miss Butters is truly his saving grace. The thing that Aspect wanted most, and now, Radar’s greatest weapon against her. Why did he ever doubt for a second that Petra _wouldn’t_ enchant her with the power of flame? 

Just one sword remains Fire Aspect’s grip, the last piece of her arsenal as she leaps down from the wall in a more graceful landing, sword hand on the ground and her other arms bent at her sides. Her hair was disheveled now, face speckled with ash and soot patches, the spark in her eyes just a little bit weaker. 

Radar had already moved from her path. He smirks, waving Miss Butters once over. 

She spits a drop of magma to the ground at her side when she stands, glaring at him but glancing aside. 

This time, Radar charges first, slamming Miss Butters into Aspect’s hasty block. Their eyes meet as they struggle against each other. Radar does not falter, adamant that his look could be compared to Gabriel’s, but the look in her eyes is far different. It’s best described as fearful, imbued with shock and alarm at his total retaliation. 

She attempts to run her sword down his, but he pulls back too soon for her attempt to disarm. He swings low, carving a shallow cut into her thigh. 

Aspect withdrawals with a pained snarl, limping back on her now injured leg. Despite a lower hand pressing down on the wound hot blood oozes from the cut, dripping down her leg and hissing as it meets the icy chill of stone. It’s music to Radar’s ears. Her last sword dissipates into ashes as she stumbles forward to her knees, face pulled into a grimace. Her eyes closed. 

At last she was starting to learn that the Order of the Stone’s intern was not one to be trifled with. 

The best battle cry Radar can conjure breaks out into the arena as he charges forward again, Miss Butters held high, ready to swing down on Fire Aspect at full force. 

Fire Aspect’s eyes shoot open anger and flame ignited in them once more. 

The last thing he expects from her is for her to prop up suddenly, hunched on all six of her limbs again, and lunge for him at blinding speed. Radar flinches hard, only assisting the strength of her tackle, her skull slamming into his ribcage, Miss Butters flying from his grip. Aspect’s full weight collapses on him as they fall to the floor. 

It feels like he’s been thrown all over again. 

Radar’s vision sparks with red and white as he blinks up at her. His breaths are short, anything more than the heave feeling as though it will burst from him, pain searing and pulsing from his chest and ribs. 

His arms are pinned. Fire Aspect bares down on him, pushing his biceps against the ice with the constricting grip of a starving python, propping herself above him. She sits on her knees, legs parted. Her lower arms hang limp, twitching as her breath falters. 

She’s grow exhausted. 

Radar does not attempt to struggle against her grip, ice stinging his bare arms. Her breath is steam in the air, as hot as her blood and smelling intensely of iron, so much so that it almost chokes what little air he manages to take in. There’s a rumble in her throat. 

In a voice so low its almost a whisper, almost intimate, she queries him. 

“Why did you _really_ come back to me, milksop?” 

Radar blinks up at her through broken glasses. His breath falters, too. “Wh- what?” 

“Why did you come _BACK?!_ ” She lifts him briefly just to slam him down again. His head hits the stone with a sickening thud, ringing and aching. “To teach me a lesson? What a merciful morsel of the Order of the Stone you are, spilling the blood of your loved ones to teach a _lesson._ ” 

Oh how she has a way with words. 

He had come back, weapons in hand, to launch an assault on the creature his family had chosen to form, the one that- 

The one that told him he doesn’t deserve _love_ or respect after everything he and the Order had been through together. She would not twist him against himself with dark, humid words from a cruel maw. Radar refused to be stepped on any longer. 

Jesse’d taught him better than this. 

From the corner of his vision, past serpentine tattoos, something shines. A black pearl on the ice. A pommel. 

Miss Butters lays several feet away, still somehow whole and undamaged. Fire Aspect takes no notice to her, eyes centered on Radar, dragon-like breath still seeping onto his face. 

“YOU’RE NOT _THEM_ ” He cries back, voice high-pitched but without crack or fault. 

Her brow raises as she blinks at him in surprise. 

What he says next sounds to his own ears like something from one of Petra’s crappy novels, but the fact makes it no less true. The truth is given scornfully, though told weaker than the rebuttal before. 

“I came for _revenge!_ ” The words end darkly, almost a snarl like her’s, but near the end they twist into the edges of a sob. “I’m not gonna let you bully me like this anymore!” 

His choice to raise his leg, ramming the toe of his shoe into Fire Aspect’s crotch as hard as he can manage from the ground, is a last minute decision made on a whim, in the speculation of a potential weak spot. It’s successful nonetheless. 

Fire Aspect _screams_. It’s animalistic, deafening in a way that Radar has never heard before. Her grip loosens, the elbow of her injured arm gives and she falls to her side, opening up the escape route that Radar had been hoping for. He pulls away effortlessly from the remnant of her grip, scrambling for the sword. 

Radar slips on the icy ground, turning his desperate surge into half of a fall. He swallows a scream of his own pain when his chest hit the ice, but the pain is short-lived, outshone by adrenaline. 

Radar wants to imagine that his sprawling scurry to Miss Butters could be called coordinated. It isn’t, desperate and sloppy as the retreat of a deer with a broken leg. 

It’s made far easier when the wolf is broken too. Fire Aspect is a writhing mess, spitting bits of fire and smoke, consumed with pain and rage. She hunches over, nearly standing and leaning on her good arms. 

“Revenge?” She heaves, glaring at him with the fury of an inferno. 

The pommel meets Radar’s fingertips. He hooks it in his fingers, pulling it closer, hilt returning to his grasp as he’s sprawled over the ice

Behind him, something clacks. Her teeth gnash as she snaps again, stepping nearer. “ _Revenge?!_ ” 

Miss Butters feels heavier than she ever has. The ache in his muscles is made known again, pulling his arm to the earth even as he tries to lift the sword. 

The strength potion’s effects are fading. 

The ground beneath him shakes. Fire Aspect stands slouched, disheveled, bloody and furious. Her fists tighten and more blood spills from her bad hand as she drops back to the ground like an animal, roaring. 

“ _ **I'LL SHOW YOU REVENGE!"**_

 

The sword is raised as soon as Radar wraps his other hand around her hilt, lifting Miss Butters so suddenly that she’s almost thrown again, but his grip holds, pointing the tip of the blade heavenward. His legs fold closer as he attempts to raise himself, a fruitless effort. 

Fire Aspect lunges, flames spilling from the corners of her mouth like the frothing of a rabid canine, roaring the whole way. 

In her final leap for him, Fire Aspect’s leg gives. She slips on the ice. 

Fire Aspect falls onto the blade. 

It slides through the center of her chest with the most sickening noise Radar has ever heard: The burst of tough flesh and the squelch of steaming blood. Her weight forces the pommel into his gut, cross guard pressing against her chest without an inch of blade visible, but Radar can’t cry from the pain of pressure. He can’t scream or moan, even when the scalding blood dribbles from her wound, dripping onto his skin. The burn is nothing but numb. 

Her body seizes violently, limbs twitching, the remains of her windpipe producing a thick gurgling growl. Crimson flows past her teeth like white stones in a river.  
Their eyes are at level. Hers are all but empty, shock draining from them as quickly as blood floods her lungs, the anger doused, embers dying in her irises. Her jaw hangs open and a warble resounds in her throat, bubbling with blood. 

Just before the last spark leaves her eyes, they meet his. 

As darkness pools in them, so does sorrow, but it does not stay for long. Her eyes fall shut. Her muscles slump. The fiery glow of her hair darkens, as does her flaring stripes. 

The weight of her body teeters on the sword and what little remains of Radar’s strength until falling to his side lifelessly, blade still lodged in her chest. 

Even when she’s slept, he’d never seen her sagging like this, not a hint of life in her limbs or face. 

So she did get the sword, in the end. 

Fire Aspect, the most powerful dual fusion, the once benevolent and beloved, had fallen to the very sword she sought most.

Radar tries to scoot away, but pain crashes down on him like an anvil. He abandons the effort, laying on his side, facing away from her. 

The air around them grows cold. Radar feels the bite of the chill, tearing him away, mauling him everywhere but his cheeks where a rush of blood and streaks of tears had already started to warm them. With his tears, more pain returns in his chest, pulsing and aching like Fire Aspect had reached in and broken every rib, burned up his heart. Nausea claws at his stomach. He lets the sobs come when the pain wanes, otherwise he breathes slowly and carefully, unmoving until the overtaking waves beat back. He can’t see his tattoos through tears. 

Deep in his chest, past the sensations of a broken body, the pain of an unloving guardian wrecks his body even more. The pain of watching the light fade from a loved one’s eyes. 

As much as she bullied him, brushed him aside and passively insulted him, Radar never wanted to see her die. 

But then, where would it have ended? When?  
He thinks no one can hear him when he wails. It’s almost a scream, held back by the weakness in his lungs. 

The world around him blurs together, light and dark, blotchy and unintelligible despite the presence of his glasses, hot and cold all at once, and Radar can’t tell whether an hour or a moment passes when there’s movement, followed by distant, murky voices. Radar feels like he’s drowning, like those voices are from the vultures watching him from the shore of the river. 

Dark blotches overtake his vision, bringing silence with them. The voices fade, and for the first time that day, Radar notes that the world around him is quiet at last. 

\-----

Radar is still unconscious by the time Cassie Rose finishes her diagnosis. She pulls away to to the other two beds where Petra and Ivor lay, allowing Lukas to approach approaches Radar’s bedside, an unfolded blanket in hand. 

“So… how bad does he look?” 

“Bad.” Her voice is flat, edged with irritation. “But it could have been a lot worse. Four broken ribs, a bruised lung, and a concussion, not to mention a ton of bruises and little burns. This kid’s seen better days, but he’s well off for someone who fought a fusion on their own.” 

Cassie bites back a mumbled remark about confronting Fire Aspect being a stupid move. She had been a bit of an enabler, hadn’t she? _But Lukas doesn’t need to know that._

Still, sympathy nibbles at the softer parts of her mind when she looks at the boy, bloodied and sobbing when the Order had found him. 

Lukas sits in the chair closest to Radar’s bed, almost immediately setting his face into his palms and exhaling slowly through parted fingers. 

“Christ.” 

He pulls his face out of his hands, looking up at Cassie again. “And them?” he nods to Ivor and Petra, far less ruffled than the teen beside him. 

“They’re fine, just exhausted. Though, they should also expect phantom pains within the coming days.” Cassie sets down a vial of glowing pink she’d been swishing around on the counter, sure to push it further from the edge. “The kid, though? He’s going to be hurting for a while. Ivor will need to keep him close. He’ll have his hands full, because once he wakes up, I’m not dealing with this anymore.” 

Lukas sighs. “Well…” 

“What?” 

“Thanks for helping anyway. I’m just… worried.” 

Cassie takes a seat at the infirmary desk, leaning on the end of the chair, snatching a quill from the inkwell. Bits of ink drop down from the tip onto the dark oak, but she pays the mess no mind. 

“Every one of you is worried. There’s a reason you’re the only one I’m allowing in here right now. Wasn’t Jesse just bawling on your shoulder out there?” 

“Yeah, Axel took her for m-” 

“See, that’s the kind of stuff that’s really hard for me to do my work around.” 

Lukas leans forward on his knee, shooting Cassie a dangerous glare. She shoots one back, from the corner of her eye, before her shoulders sag and and she huffs. Lukas leans back again, glancing away, leg bouncing. 

“...Like I was gonna say, Jesse thinks it’s her fault. We knew Aspect was starting to get- well, dominant, I guess, but we didn’t think she’d do something like- like _this_.” He gestures to Radar, who’s broken glasses had been set on the side table, a bandage wrapped around his head. Lukas combs his fingers through his hair, huffing in what seems to be a failed attempt at a laugh. “We were just on a trip to the market. We were gonna- we bought her _cake_. How on earth do you expect to come home to something like this?” 

“You don’t.” Cassie doesn’t look up from her quill, scratching notes on bleached parchment. “You pick up the pieces and deal with the fallout. Thinking about what could have been, what you would have done if you had been there or went about something differently, won’t do shit for anyone.” 

Cassie pauses for a moment, pen tip hovering close to the bottom of the paper. Yet, she looks up from it, right into Lukas’s eyes. “That way of thinking just makes life feel shittier.” 

The secondhand alchemist stands with the paper in hand. Their eyes never break contact as she approaches him, handing the paper off. “Here. It’s everything Ivor needs to know about Radar’s condition. Now if you don’t mind-” She makes for the door, not looking back as she speaks. “I’m snooping around Ivor’s lab before he wakes up. Don’t tell the others. Oh, and you can let everyone in now.” 

The door closes before Lukas can say anything more to her. 

He makes a mental note to make sure no one touches the cake they’d left abandoned in the kitchen after they heard those distant, pitiful wails. Lukas knows someone who needs it far more than Fire Aspect. Someone who deserves it, and their love, for his bravery. None of them were going to argue that. 

It was hard not to guess the end result of whatever had happened: They found Ivor and Petra, unconscious on the floor with Petra’s sword not far from them, and Radar: Beaten, burned, somewhere between crying and passing out, all on a day when they had left an aggressive Fire Aspect and Radar to their own devices 

It was amazing how stupid all of them were sometimes, as a collective. 

He has a feeling that Ivor and Petra will be giving Radar an awful lot of gifts, too, avoiding eye contact if they may. Lukas can’t blame them for blaming themselves, even if it hasn’t yet happened. Doubt is a rising storm on the near horizon. 

So Lukas sits back for a moment longer, gaze drifting to Radar who still had not yet shown signs of waking. In that moment, Lukas can’t help but wonder if Radar will be able to forgive _himself_ for whatever happened in that arena.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction takes place in a very personal, modified version of the MCSM canon with a lot of headcanons integrated. Cassie Rose's inclusion is born from a concept I went over with a friend a while back, where Cassie Rose received a redemption arc thanks to the kindness of Jesse, and lives in solitude in the temple basement, rarely interacting with the rest of them unless they are in dire need of a healer. 
> 
> Fire Aspect, as a fusion, began as someone heroic and kind, but slowly developed into a far more sinister figure, hence her behavior towards Radar and her perception of Ivor and Petra, and the stark differences between herself and those who make her up.
> 
> (And, good lord, this has to be one of the longest oneshots I've ever written)


End file.
